Description:
Nancy Drew has always been a great heroine, but she seemed kind of, well... stuffy. No more: Nancy gets down to the dirty work of crime solving in the excellent and engaging Nancy Drew: Stay Tuned for Danger. As you might imagine, we see a lot of software, but Danger captivated us, holding us long enough to postpone other reviews while we searched for more clues! In the game, Nancy's job is to investigate death threats coming to Rick Arlen, a hunky TV soap star. The plot is straightforward enough, and here's what the software really does well: ambiance. The first-person perspective puts you in the center of the crime scenes, and the inventive game design lets you pick up objects for investigation and keep notes on things you've found. Occasionally, you come across another person, and it can often be surprising. In the style of Choose Your Own Adventure books, you're given various questions to ask, and what you choose alters the outcome of what you learn. The people seem a little stiff in conversation (and, to be honest, in the graphics), but in a strange way, it helps increase the creepiness factor--an uptight verbal response makes sense, considering they're being interviewed about a serious crime. There's a real rush that comes from finding key elements and extracting just the right piece of information from an unwitting witness. Nancy Drew, first created as a female version of the Hardy Boys in 1929, has weathered fashion and tastes well through the work of HerInteractive. For girls too old for "kids' stuff" but who still want a game that's all theirs, Nancy Drew: Stay Tuned for Danger can help fulfill a teen or preteen's need for adventure. --Jennifer Buckendorff
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